


Enter the Corpus

by MiskatonicWhaler



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Alternate Universe, exorcist AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-18 10:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21274946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiskatonicWhaler/pseuds/MiskatonicWhaler
Summary: It was a wonderful day for an exorcism.
Kudos: 10





	Enter the Corpus

**Author's Note:**

> Some implied spoilers for The Exorcist movie in this chapter.

...

Two ruby pinpricks of light met Father Membrane’s gaze as he entered the child’s bedroom, book and crucifix clutched tightly in hand. The room was dark, and he could just make out the white clouds of mist formed by his breath in the frigid air. He felt around the wall until he found the light switch.

The child’s teeth were bared in an impossibly wide grin.

_“Dib-priest,” _a voice spat in a tone that should not have been produced by twelve-year-old vocal cords. The child appeared to be sitting perfectly calmly on the bed, though the bound ankles and wrists and the fact that every piece of furniture in the room was covered in padding suggested this was possibly outside the norm.

“Occult Kid,” the priest replied evenly. He came further into the room, setting his book on the nightstand, and pulled up a stool. Even seated, his lean, black-robed figure towered over the creature on the bed.

_“Occult Kid isn’t here right now.”_

“Then who am I speaking to?”

The child appeared to scoff. _“Stupid mortal! You are obviously speaking to the great and mighty _ZIM! _Bow to your overlord, putrid flesh-weasel!”_

“Zim?” The priest frowned, and considered the pair of bright red eyes attempting to bore through his skull. “Zim… Not ringing any bells. You don’t mean Azazel, by any chance? Mammon? Baphomet? Zuul?”

The creature _hissed_. The electric lights flickered faintly overhead, once, twice.

“Or maybe that one from a few years back, Pazuzel or something…”

_“FOOL! If you have not heard of _ZIM_ it can only be because you are a foolish human pig-smelly drowning in your own primordial slime! Your giant head may look intelligent but it is filled with nothing but sad buzzing flies! And beans! BEANS I SAY!”_

Father Membrane leaned back to avoid the spittle. “Is that so? Because it sounds to me like a name that a _child_ would come up with.” He peered sharply over the rims of his glasses. “A child who heard just a little bit about demons in Sunday Skool and got fixated on the idea. A child now trying desperately to convince everyone that possession is a real occurrence.”

_“Are you calling _ZIM _a LIAR?”_

“Aren’t demons kind of… known for being liars?”

_“Oh. Yeah. Fair point.”_

They stared each other down for a while in uncomfortable silence.

“Look,” Father Membrane finally cleared his throat. “It’s not that I don’t _want_ to believe you’re a horrible demon. But I can’t just go around waving crosses at people, either. Got to rule out the other, you know, _mundane_ possibilities first. Physiological, psychosomatic, all that mumbo-jumbo.”

_“Sounds like a waste of time.”_

_“Yes!_ That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years! Someone who’s really possessed can’t afford to wait however long it takes to run all those tests, not to mention the _medical_ _bills!_ And if they’re not possessed, well, nobody ever died just from having a book read at them!”

_“Easy for you to say, giant-head. How many books did they have to stack on your skull to make it squashed like that, anyway?”_

“Hey! My head is perfectly normal-shaped!”

_“Now who’s a lying liar-faced sludge worm.”_

“ARGH! There’s no way someone as annoying and petty as you is a real honest-to-god demon.” He gathered his items from the nightstand and stood up in one motion. “I’m writing the Bishop to call off the whole investigation. It’s _clearly_ just a bored kid playing games—”

_“LIES! I am _ZIM! ZIM _the Invader, the Doom of Worlds, the Ancient and Altitudinous FIEND!”_

Father Membrane narrowed his eyes. “Then prove it.”

A stream of brightly colored vomit hit him squarely in the face.

_“AHAHAHA! Looking a little green around the gills, Dib-stink!”_

Father Membrane yanked his slime-covered glasses off his face and replaced them with a clean pair produced from his pocket.

“That is _not_ what I meant, and you know it! You know what I think? I think that even if you _are_ a demon, you’re some miserable nobody who’s so far down the food chain, you—you’re what other demons eat for breakfast! People don’t notice when you’re possessing them because it’s just like having indigestion! Somebody accidentally kicked you out of Heaven because they didn’t see you standing there, and you couldn’t reach the footstool to climb back up—”

The body on the bed suddenly lifted into the air, completely unsupported. Furniture whined in protest as the straps binding the child pulled taut. Rage simmered in the child’s ruby gaze.

_“You will fear the _ZIM! _Tremble before your DOOOOM!”_

Father Membrane was grinning wildly now. “Aha… ahaha… AHAHAHAA! That’s it! Show your true power, demon! Those idiots back at the rectory won’t be laughing anymore when they see this recording! _Demonic possession is real! Ahahahaaa!”_

A small object zoomed out of a pocket on the priest’s robe, flying through the air until it hovered several feet above the child’s floating form. It appeared to be a tiny camera.

It exploded in a shower of even tinier debris.

_“NOOOOO!” _Father Membrane howled. “You will pay for this, hellfiend!” He flipped open his black leather-bound book, racing through the pages with desperate fury. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, _Amen!”_

The priest began spitting scriptures like bullets at the entity, which continued to writhe in midair. Furniture trembled around the room, the lights flipped on and off, and a wind from nowhere began to keen.

“The power of Christ compels you!” Father Membrane shouted at last, breathing hard, a triumphant if slightly-crazed expression lighting his face.

A sudden cacophony of farmyard noises—cows lowing, goats bleating, pigs squealing—drowned out his words. The din died down a moment later.

_“What?” _yelled the demon. _“I couldn’t hear you.”_

“I said, the power of Christ compels—”

Geese honking, dogs barking, horses whinnying.

_“What?”_

“I _said, the power of Christ_—”

Was that… a tractor driving over a gravel road?

_“Whaaat?”_

“I SAID, THE POWER OF—”

The farmer’s entire family seemed to be yodeling. Poorly.

Father Membrane yelled something further unintelligible, tossed his book aside and grabbed a vial of holy water from his belt. He ripped off the seal with his teeth and flung the entire contents at the airborne entity.

_“AHHHHH! Not the water! It burnssss!”_

“Yeah? Maybe you should’ve thought about that before taunting a priest, you sad excuse for an imp—”

With a terrible _snap_, the straps binding the child were torn free. Small but impossibly powerful hands came at the priest’s throat, and they wrestled, greater strength pitted against longer reach.

_“Surrender, you insane disgusting meat monkey! Surrender to _ZIM! _So that I can kill you!”_

“Must… you torment… Occult Kid like this?” Father Membrane panted, still struggling to keep the demon from getting a grip on his neck. “When… will you leave… that body?”

_“When this corpse lies rotting in the stinking earth!” _the demon snarled.

Father Membrane met the furious red eyes as levelly as he could while locked in a death-match. “Then take… me… instead! Leave this child… come into me!”

_“Eh? Okay.”_

The child immediately ceased all movement, dropping to the floor like a rag doll. Father Membrane held his breath, hoping against hope that the child was merely unconscious.

Then his vision swam and split into two images of the same room, superimposed and slightly offset from each other—only for one brief, nauseating instant. Then his view of the room snapped back into a single image.

Pain seared through his skull.

_“Victory for _ZIM! _AHAHAHAHAAA!” _screamed a voice that was his own and not his own.

From the corner of his eye, Father Membrane noticed the child was stirring, moaning faintly. He immediately tried to divert his attention elsewhere, keep the entity distracted, but he felt the other presence inside his head notice in spite of his best efforts.

So without allowing himself a further thought, Father Membrane crashed through the single window in the bedroom wall, falling three stories to the pavement below.

_Darkness._

::tbc::


End file.
